Admission requirements
The student has taken a language acquisition course in Ancient Greek, e.g. Ancient Greek for Linguists, and knows about the basic sound changes between PIE and Greek.
Description
This course gives a one-semester introduction to the dialect variation and the historical grammar of Ancient Greek. During the first half of the course, the main phonological and morphological characteristics of Ancient Greek and some of its dialects are reviewed. Sound developments that are covered include the reflexes of the Indo-European laryngeals and syllabic resonants, and of word-initial yod. We will use a course syllabus on historical phonology that also contains exercises, and we will take a look at a number of inscriptions.
During the second part of the course, we will analyze Ancient Greek literary dialects from a historical perspective: we will read sections from Sappho and from Homer’s Iliad. The course will be assessed with a written midterm exam as well as a take home final assignment with open questions on a short passage from Homer. All texts and syllabi will be made available through Brightspace.
Course objectives
At the end of the course, students will:
Remember and understand essential facts about the history of attestation, writing systems, phonology and dialectal diversity of Ancient Greek;
Understand the spelling rules of the different writing systems in relation to the language’s phonology, and apply this understanding and knowledge;
Remember the main phonological developments that took place in the (pre)history of Greek until the end of the Classical period, understand the relation between these developments in time and space, and apply these developments to transform reconstructed forms into attested Greek forms;
Analyse and account for phonological and morphological differences between forms from different dialects; make and evaluate reconstructions based on such differences.
be able to make translations of Homeric Greek into English with the help of a grammar and dictionary, and to comment on morphological and phonological peculiarities of this language from a historical linguistic perspective.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- Lecture/Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Midterm exam on the historical phonology of Ancient Greek
Take-home assignment with open questions on a piece of Homeric Greek
Weighing
The exam and take home assignment both count for 50% of the final mark.
Additional requirement: the grade of both parts must be at least 5.
Resit
There is one resit option for both parts of the assessment.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will be organized.
Reading list
Course Syllabus, including exercises (distributed via Brightspace)
Annotated texts from Homer and Sappho (distributed via Brightspace)
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats
Remarks
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